


Among the Trees

by fenellaevangela



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 00:28:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5949175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenellaevangela/pseuds/fenellaevangela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One crewmember on a spaceship exploring a distant planet finds herself reliving their landfall again and again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Among the Trees

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galfridian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/gifts).



The first time her ship lands on Arachne, Tilde is still in her cabin when the landing party is ambushed by the aliens. She doesn’t even see them, is wrist-deep in her kit with her back to the door when a blast hits her and she dies. 

The second time, Tilde knows what’s coming. No one else on the ship can remember their first landfall, but space is a tricky thing and the crew believes her nonetheless. They will be prepared this time, Tilde thinks. They approach Arachne on high alert and decide to abandon their original landing site, touching down far away from the aliens who had killed them – would kill them. But in the end all that their precautions buy them is almost a day of safety on Arachne soil before the aliens descend upon them and Tilde dies with a blaster in her hand. They come from the trees.

* * *

By the sixth time her ship has landed on Arachne, Tilde has started calling the planet Anansi in her head. Only a trickster would be doing this to her, waking her up again and again only to have the results remain variations of the same. She tries to convince her shipmates to turn the ship around but that solution is too drastic for them - the planet is too close and they’ve come too far. They see their deaths merely as hypotheticals. Only Tilde knows that they are living on borrowed time, and when the aliens attack she feels a bitter desire to say _I told you this would happen. I told you. Why didn’t you listen?_

On the tenth landfall, Tilde leaves. Her captain chose to forgo their original landing site this time, and each time this has happened before the aliens have never taken less than half a day to appear. She knows she has the time, so Tilde packs her kit with extra food and slips away from the landing party before the aliens descend from the trees. She hikes for hours and doesn’t hear the attack when it comes, but her radio falls silent before night arrives. She stays awake as long as she can.

The next day she slips away in another direction. She walks and walks and walks.

* * *

By the fifteenth day Tilde stops trying to warn her crew. Instead, she stares down on the looming curve of Anansi and waits for the ship to land. The plan _will_ work, she tells herself, and prepares while surrounded by the excitement and bustle of the ship’s final descent. This time, when the aliens attack, Tilde is standing in her cabin in the spot where she first died. She stands there, her pulse racing, until she hears the alien approaching in the corridor. Then she uses what she learned among Anansi’s trees.

“Walheda,” Tilde says, and watches as the alien stops in her doorway, lowering its blaster. _Parley_.

This time would be different.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day, galfridian! I hope you enjoyed by bite-sized piece of fiction, and that it's all right that the relationship between Tilde and the aliens is a bit oblique. This was fun to write!


End file.
